This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

The Queen's Bed by Anna Whitelock: review

By Robert Collison

Wed., Feb. 19, 2014

As Elizabeth II marks her 62 year as monarch this February, there has recently been a surge of books chronicling the epic reign of her namesake, Elizabeth the First. Unlike our present queen, this “virgin queen” wielded immense political power in 16th century England.

Back then the monarch was the source of all executive authority and most historians agree Elizabeth was one of England’s greatest “kings.” Unquestionably she is one of the most powerful women to have ever lived. So is it any wonder that this brilliant, vain, temperamental, wily woman still fascinates centuries later?

Anna Whitelock’s new book, The Queen’s Bed, An Intimate History of Elizabeth’s Court, purports to reveal what happened behind Elizabeth’s closed bedroom doors. In the British edition, it’s titled The Queen’s Bedfellows, because its focus ostensibly was the 28 women who served as Ladies of the Bedchamber. Their duties involved everything from dressing Elizabeth in the morning, to removing her makeup at night, to emptying her velvet-encased “close-stool” — her potty — to, most extraordinarily, sharing her bed at night. Elizabeth was never alone because she was forever in danger of being assassinated by her enemies.

Article Continued Below

The Queen’s Bed documents the numerous foiled plots against Elizabeth and the fact that she ruled for 44 years is a testament to the success of the Elizabethan police state whose security apparatus was as brutal as any contemporary despot’s. Still, it was Elizabeth’s “ladies” — Kat Ashley, Mary Sidney, Blanche Parry, etc. — who were the first line of defense in preserving her from bodily harm.

This book could have as easily been titled The Queen’s Body because 16th century England fetishized Elizabeth’s body as the physical incarnation of the state and, indeed, at her coronation she talked about her two bodies: her natural body, which would age like any other, and her “body politik,” the monarch as the country’s corporeal essence, which must never be allowed to wither or decay.

Whitelock details the cosmetic legerdemain involved in maintaining the “illusion” of Elizabeth’s youth, sometimes counterproductively. Because of their toxic ingredients, some cosmetics actually accelerated her ageing. In later years, Elizabeth’s appearance was almost a state secret and only her ladies were permitted in the Queen’s “presence” until she was wigged, magnificently attired and had her face applied. When the Earl of Essex bounded into her chambers one morning he discovered what lay behind the mask: a wrinkled, bald old woman. Not amused, Elizabeth never saw Essex again.

Article Continued Below

Throughout her reign Elizabeth’s womanly body was a matter of interest and titillation. In a famous speech to her troops, she proclaimed, “Although I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, I have the heart and stomach of a King.” But those were not the body parts that intrigued 16th-century Europe; it was the status of the queen’s virtue.

Much of The Queen’s Bed pivots on the issue of her virginity that was, in essence, a state asset. Any royal suitor would expect that Elizabeth’s nether parts to have never been breached. Well into midlife, Elizabeth coyly played one suitor off another but never acquiesced. Whitelock doesn’t say so, but Elizabeth seemed to believe — rightly by my reckoning — that marriage meant sharing power with a man, a “sacrifice” she would not make.

Marriage is one thing, love another. Was Gloriana ever enraptured? As portrayed here, Elizabeth is a woman equal parts passionate and pragmatic and, again, though Whitelock never states whether any of her supposed lovers — the Earl of Leicester, Sir Christopher Hatton, Essex, etc. — ever bedded the Queen, my bet’s on a little hanky-panky in the royal boudoir. My only proof: When Elizabeth died, her ladies refused to allow her body to be examined and exhumed for burial. The Virgin Queen went to her grave “regina intacta.”

Elizabethan England was a ribald wondrous realm ruled by an extraordinary woman and Anna Whitelock brings it vividly to life in The Queen’s Bed.

Other Recent Books On Elizabeth and The Tudors

Robert Collison is a Toronto-based writer and editor.

Heretic Queen, by Susan Ronald: This book chronicles Elizabeth’s pivotal role in the struggle between Protestant and Catholic Europe, the “cold war” that dominated 16th-century European politics.

Tudors: The History of England from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, by Peter Ackroyd. In this book Ackroyd demonstrates how the Tudor dynasty transformed England from a feudal state into a global power.

The Rise Of The Tudors: The Family That Changed English History, by Chris Skidmore. Skidmore relays the epic story behind the transformation of a Welsh gentry family into a royal dynasty, a feat culminating at the Battle of Bosworth Field where Henry Tudor, later Henry VII, defeated Richard III.

READ THIS BEFORE YOU READ THAT.
GET OUR BOOKS NEWSLETTER TO YOUR INBOX.

More from The Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com